‘Success for all’ is more possible than we dared dream!Geoff Petty June 2003

SummaryThis paper is largely based on Ericsson’s research reviewi on how people become exceptionally able, expert, or skilled. It summarises this influential review, adds other evidence pointing in the same direction, and concludes with some thoughts on the implications for learning and teaching. Many eminent educationalists for example Prof Charles Desforges of Exeter University believe the implications for education are very profound indeed.

Ericsson’s research review asks the question: ‘are people with exceptional skills and abilities born, or are they made?’ Is exceptional performance in the fields of academic work, music, chess, athletics, and the arts etc, due to fixed attributes such as genes, talent, I.Q., and luck? Or is it down to learning and hard work? The review, the most authoritative available, summarises research in many domains of human endeavour, and comes down heavily in favour of nurture over nature. There is a great deal of evidence now that ‘talent’, ‘I.Q.’ and the ability to perform in an exceptionally skilful manner are all learned through ‘deliberate practice’. This directly contradicts the deeply held convictions of teachers and learners, in the West at any rate. You may find yourself disbelieving much of Ericsson’s findings as a consequence. If so, please suspect your conditioning!

Ericsson’s conclusion, that ability comes from deliberate practice not genes, has profound implications for both teaching and learning. Many learners believe their achievement is determined at least in part by fixed attributes, often fixed at birth. ‘I can’t do maths’ ‘I’m no good at writing essays’. These learners do not see themselves as improvable, and many of their teachers agree. If both learner and teacher believe success is unlikely, the prophesy is likely to become self-fulfillingii. Also many managers see teaching as a God given talent, not a learned skill, and so despair of improvement in their teachers.

The good news is that everybody is improvable, and to remarkably high levels. The bad news is that the improvement only comes about due to hard work. The worst news of all is that most people in the West do not believe that such improvement is possible for many. We believe there is a ceiling on our possible attainment. Confucian cultures such as China, Japan and Korea however have always seen skills as learned, and must be wondering what all the fuss is about. Their unshakable belief in improvability must go some way to explain why they outperform the West in international educational comparisons such as those carried out by UNESCO.

I conclude this paper by arguing that we need to change from a ‘talent culture’ to a ‘learning culture’ before we can reap the rewards many of our learners are at present denied.

Ericsson’s Review ‘The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance’ - A summary

There is a very widespread view, (outside of genetics and behavioural genetics), that outstanding performance in academic pursuits, sports, science and the arts, are due to special gifts, talent, divine intervention, high I.Q., inherited characteristics, genes etc. These are all innate and unchangeable characteristics over which we have no control. Whole research programmes have attempted to measure these supposedly fixed aptitudes or attributes (e.g. research on I.Q.). The assumption has been that genetic factors rigidly determine maximal performance. Let’s call this the ‘talent model’:

The ‘talent model’(discredited by Ericsson’s review)

Note the ‘plateau’ caused by the learner ‘hitting their genetic ceiling’.

Skillor ability

Ericsson’s ‘deliberate practice’ model

Some researchers found that the talent model was not born out by the evidence. Take research into I.Q. for example. Gibson found in 1969 that there were ‘large practice effects’ shown in I.Q. measurement. That is, I.Q. could be increased by practice.

The correlation between I.Q. and exceptional performance in music or academia or the professions is very low. For example, for scientists, engineers, and medical doctors, the correlation between I.Q. and occupational success is 0.2. This means that 4% of the variance in occupational success is explained by I.Q., though this correlation falls with time. The longer the person practices, the less the effect of their IQ. How many in the west would accept that 96% of the cause of the success of an academic and other professional had nothing to do with their intelligence?

Psychometric aptitude tests also explain only about 4% of the variance in occupational success, and again the correlation reduces with time and practice. This reduction of the effect of ‘talent’ with time is the exact opposite of what the ‘talent model’ predicts. The talented are not rising to the top, they are being overtaken by those with ‘less talent’!

It is not just professional competence that is learned rather than innate, we even learn to use our memory. Psychologists studying memory found that the extraordinary memory feats of expert chess-players were produced by practice. Chess grandmasters can recall the position of almost every piece on a chess-board after studying it for only a few seconds. It was thought this was a gift. But researchers found that their memory outside of chess was no better than average. Also, if the chess pieces were placed in a manner that would never happen in a real chess game, their memory was no better than that of a novice. The ‘gift’ had been acquired after many years spent

At one time it was thought that high I.Q. was due to faster than normal neural transmission rates. If this were true, then intelligent people ought to have a fast reaction time. This turned out not to be the case.

regionalacclaim

national acclaim

international acclaim

5,000 hrs 10,000 hrs

Note that there is no ‘plateau’ effect.

Time spent on deliberate practice

Skillor ability

studying chess games, and was assisted by being able to recognise frequently recurring patterns, and slight deviations from this.iii

These ‘practice effects’ in the memory of experts have been found in many other areas of expertise, for example in music.

Deliberate Practice‘Deliberate practice’ is not just doing it again, or more of the same. It is not just violinists playing the violin, teachers teaching, or mathematics students doing mathematics.

Deliberate Practice Is a deliberate, systematic and highly structured attempt to improve levels of performance Is often given by a coach or teacher for practice during and between coaching sessions. “I

want you to practice your backhand…” Practice is most effective when it is slow and accurate, and it must address known weaknesses.

Is often done intensively over and over. E.g. just playing backhands rather than playing normally

Involves monitoring performance to provide cues for ways to improve Requires full attention throughout and is so effortful that even the most determined can

only manage about 4hours of deliberate practice a day. Any attempt to do more than this for even a short period results in ‘burnout’, ‘overtraining’, injury or demotivation. Individual practice sessions are limited by exhaustion to about one hour duration.

There are diminishing returns from deliberate practice hours, up to the maximum of four hours a day. Children cannot sustain four hours a day of deliberate practice, but as they get older they can manage more

Is not inherently enjoyable, though the improvements they create may be enjoyed

Deliberate practice should be contrasted with:

Work: This is usually ‘doing it again’, or ‘more of the same’, at least for reasonably experienced workers. Consequently there is little learning, as learning requires that we get out of our ‘comfort zone’ and do something new. Work sometimes involves a public performance where the high cost of mistakes discourages experiment, and so learning.

Play: This is intrinsically enjoyable, with the person often in a state of effortless ‘flow’ that is very different from deliberate practice.

The West Berlin Music Academy Studies Music is a domain where many believe talent plays a crucial part. Researchers studied 40 violinists at the Internationally renowned Berlin Music Academy. The violinists the researchers studied were all the same age, and all rated ‘deliberate practice’ as paramount. All spent about 50 hours a week on music. The researchers put the violinists into three categories, based on the opinion of their professors: the best, the good, and those studying to be come violin teachers. (!)

When the researchers interviewed the violinists they found that deliberate practice ranged from 24 hours per week for the best violinists to 9hours a week for those training to be teachers. All violinists used 80 minute practice sessions. The best violinists often napped in between practice sessions because they found them so exhausting, and because they thought sleep beneficial.

Tests on musicians have found that they do not have better general motor skills than non-musicians.

‘Perfect pitch’ was once thought to be a gift, but it has been taught and learned.

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” (NLP saying). Teachers must change what they do if they are to improve.

The researchers asked the violinists to tell them how much deliberate practice they did for every year since they started playing the violin. The researchers then calculated the lifetime accumulated hours spent on deliberate practice, which were:

For those studying to Become violin teachers: 4000 hours

For the ‘good’ violinists: 8000 hours

For the ‘best’ violinists: 10,000 hours

The best violinists all started to play the instrument very young. Early starters dominate the highest ranks in music, chess, ballet, and athletics. This is because no-one can do more than 4 hours deliberate practice a day, so even the most determined improver cannot catch up with an early starter who practices at or near the maximum rate. (four hours of deliberate practice a day for an adult).

‘Practice hours’ are hours of Deliberate Practice. Diagram From The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance; K. Ericsson, R. Krampe, C. Tesch-Romer; Psychological Review 1993. Vol 100. No 3. 363-406

So even musical talent is learned. But can learning be the only difference between the amateur and the expert? Ericsson could not rule out the possibility that personal differences may support the high levels of deliberate practice needed to achieve such a high standard. This is being researched now. He guesses that some differences may predispose individuals to become good at deliberate practice. The factors he suggests are:

‘levels of activity’, the ability to do a great deal of laborious work and ‘emotionality’ zeal, desire to succeed, motivation etc.

These characteristics are often the products of effective learning, not just their pre-requisit, so we are again in the territory of self-fulfilling prophesies.

Believing oneself to be talented can also create a self fulfilling prophesyiv, though the reverse is also true. Research shows that if your parents (or your teacher) believe you are bad at maths, this reduces your attainment.

‘The Matthew Effect’‘To him that hath, it will be given’

In the Berlin studies no exceptions were found to the rule that to be an elite violinist you must do 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. The talent model predicts that some violinists would be better than others who had completed more deliberate practice. This was not found, even in the domain of music, where the talent model is almost universally accepted.

(cf. 22 lessons a week ---> roughly 800 lessons a year ---> 12.5 years for 10’000 lessons…)

Researchers have made similar findings in other domains

Athletics

Compared to the norm, good athletes may have, depending on their sport: Bigger hearts Exceptional aerobic ability More capillaries supplying blood to their muscles A higher proportion of ‘slow twitch’ muscles fibres to ‘fast twitch’ muscle fibres Bigger bones and muscles, Less fat

But the above characteristics have all been found to improve with exercise. Research studies similar to the one above on violinists have shown that these positive characteristics are all physiological adaptions to training, that is, the result of ‘deliberate practice’. They are not the genetic gifts they were once thought to be. When exercise stops, all these attributes regress.

Athletics records are being broken because of improved training, which has increased in duration, intensity and structure to the point where Olympic records have been improved by up to 50%. The Olympic marathon record of 1896 is only a minute faster than the present entry time for the Boston Marathon.

The 10,000 hour, 10 year rule To become an internationally recognised expert, or to make a universally recognised contribution in your field you need To have carried out deliberate practice for about 10,000 hours (so start young!) To have been practising for at least 10 years To practice at the maximum rate for your age (4hours a day for adults)There are almost no exceptions to this rule in music, science, mathematics, tennis, ballet, swimming, long distance running; medical diagnosis, and even the evaluation of livestock.(A minor exception to the rule is Bobby Fischer, he took 9 years to become a grandmaster, other grandmasters took between 10 and 17 years)This empirical finding contradicts the talent model, which predicts that some should excel with relatively little effort.

Skill improvement

Parents give opportunities and encourage practice. Learners gain self-belief in their ability to learn.

My own, and my parents’ perception of me as a talented child

Long distance runners now train with maximum intensity, not for maximum time. They run as fast as they can at the outset of a training session and then keep this up for just over an hour. They then rest before their next high intensity session. Such training encourages the physiological adaptions of heart size, aerobic efficiency etc that makes a good runner.

The best running performance of an athlete is highly correlated with the number of times they train per week

National runners train: 4.9 times a weekRegional runners train: 4.2 times per weekLocal runners train: 3.2 times per week

Half the variance in the times of marathon runners is accounted for by the 9 weeks of training before the event.

ChessGrandmasters spend about 4 hours a day studying published chess games of master level performers. They select the next moves and compare their move with that of the master and follow the consequences. Bobby Fischer learned the rules of chess at 6 years, and began studying books of games in the same year.

Writers and scientistsScientists at the international level work for 80 hours a week on science. The equivalent to deliberate practice for scientists is thought to be writing, and they spend up to four hours a day thinking and writing, usually before lunch. Highly productive authors do the same.For scientists, authors, and poets ten years work is needed before they are published, and then another ten years between their first published work and their best work.

MusicTchaikovsky’s violin concerto was offered to the two greatest violinists of his day for it’s first performance. Both refused, and pronounced it unplayable. Today it can be played by thousands of violinists.

LearningAlthough not mentioned in Ericsson’s review, the work of the Israeli educationalist Reuven Feuersteinv fits his model perfectly. Feuerstein developed a hugely successful course for learners with moderate learning difficulties and very low I.Q.s. They started his course with a mental age three years behind other learners. There was a ‘control group’ enabling Feuerstein to measure his students’ progress against that of students that were matched for ability but then taught in a more conventional way.

At the end of their two year course Feuerstein’s ‘Instrumental Enrichment’ students had shown modest gains in terms of increased IQ compared to the control group, though they showed a marked ability to transfer learning from one situation to another. Two years after the programme had ended, the students entered the Israeli army on compulsory service. On a test of general intelligence they were found to be average for the general population, though they had started Feuerstein’s programme three years behind! The control group had not shown this development.

Feuersten’s methods, which require special training to implement, are now used to great effect in many countries. Feuerstein has shown that IQ and moderate learning difficulties are not necessarily a ‘life sentence’ caused by innate and unchangeable characteristics. (Though a minority of learning difficulties have an organic cause such as brain damage at birth which can make their difficulties much less treatable.) Like the research quoted by Ericsson, Feuerstein has refuted the genetic model of intelligence with hard evidence. Some of his ex students have become university lecturers and professors.

Carol Dweck is Professor of Psychology at Columbia University and is a leader in the field of student motivation. She and others have found that if students attribute success to factors within their control such as effort, time, using the right strategy and asking for help, they can overcome challenges and learn very effectively. However, if they attribute success to innate, unchangeable factors such as talent, I.Q., gifts etc, then they withdraw from challenges and so don’t learn well. About half of students at every academic level inhibit their learning due to a lack of belief in their own improvability.vi

To conclude then, Ericsson’s review has shown that ability is learned, not innate. However, only if the learner and their teacher believe this, will learners achieve their potential. Similarly, teaching is surely a learned skill. For example despite a very thorough search no correlations between personality type and teaching ability have been found. To improve teaching, managers must believe in the improvability of their staff.

Even experienced practitioners can improve with deliberate practicePractice does not inevitably lead to improvement, only deliberate practice with its effortful reorganisation of the skill can improve performance, and it can do this however long a previous ‘plateau’ may be.

There is a classic study of Morse Code operators which Ericsson mentions, that identified long term plateaus in skill acquisition. However, if the skill was ‘restructured’, operators could overcome this plateau to produce dramatic improvements. Most learning and teaching is not like Morse Code operating! However it is difficult to see how improvement could be avoided if genuine deliberate practice was used.

Some practitioners in every field are searching for a relatively effortless, automatic, risk free strategies that give a reasonably standard of competence only. They can often achieve this in about 50 hours of practice in many domains. This is the ‘steep learning curve’. Others don’t believe that ‘good enough’ is good enough and are striving for continual improvement.

Practice time

Deliberate practiceStarts here.

Skillor ability

There is a well known anecdote, true according to my father who was keen fan, that Lee Travino the famous golfer holed a very long put and a spectator muttered within his hearing “You lucky sod!”. Travino was unperturbed. “That’s right” he replied “And you know it’s a funny thing - The more I practise the luckier I get.”

The consequences for Learning and Teaching of the Deliberate Practice model

This goes beyond Ericsson’s review and is a personal view

1. Teachers can improve, even if they have been teaching for some time… but it requires deliberate practice! Teachers must experiment with new approaches and deliberately learn from these. We need to develop an experimental action research culture, where staff deliberately set about improving their teaching through Supported Experiments. See my ‘Supported Experiments’ paper.vii

2. There is a ‘talent culture’ amongst managers in the West which characterises substantial improvement of teachers as nearly impossible. Though entirely discredited by research the talent model still strangles development at birth in many institutions. We need to change this talent culture. Unless we do, the assumption that improvement is impossible will continue to be self-fulfilling.viii

3. There is no ceiling on a student’s educational attainment. Even students with Learning Difficulties can attain if they are taught in the most effective ways

4. The talent model causes many teachers and students to unconsciously conspire towards an assumption that the substantial improvement of at least the weakest 50% of students is impossible. This creates a self-fulfilling prophesy. Again it is this talent culture that must be tackled before the gains these students are capable of can be realised.

5. Changing the talent model towards an ‘unfulfilled potential’ or ‘deliberate practice’ model is possible.ix

But How?There is no space in this short paper to explain ‘how’ in detail, but here are a few pointers. Further information on many of them can be found on my amateur website: http://geoffpetty.moonfruit.com

To improve teaching: Encourage staff to carry out supported experiments or action research, download a

copy of my ‘Supported Experiments’ paper from the ‘For Managers’ page of my website mentioned above

try the active learning page of the same website, and download ’23 ways for teaching without talking’ and ‘formative teaching’ for activities to experiment with.

skill

timeLearning is dependent on time, help, support, and on a deliberate effort to improve. Over time, very substantial improvement is possible: for both learners, and for teachers

The talent model, which assumed a ceiling on development due to innate and unchangeable personal characteristics has been refuted. But it still lives on in our minds and in our culture, and so limits improvement of both learners and teachers, through pessimistic self-fulfilling prophesies.

Once an experimental culture is beginning to be developed, concentrate experiments and other developments on the factors that have the greatest effect on achievement, such as formative assessment. Again the website has some useful references, particularly the work of John Hattie and professors Black and Wiliam.

See my ‘Teaching Today’ for more ideas to try.

To improve learning: Encourage students to believe in their own improvability, and to attribute success to

their own efforts rather than to innate characteristics by making use of self-assessment, peer assessment, and ‘spoof-assessment’ where students mark a spoof piece of work devised for this purpose. These methods all encourage ‘internal attributions’, that is, they make learners see that achievement is possible if you go about the work in the right way. Download the formative teaching handout from the active learning page of my website mentioned above.

See my Teaching Today for methods to experiment with

Geoff Petty: geoffreypetty@mac.comJuly 2003

Endnotes:The first reference below is the Ericsson research review mentioned.

i The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert PerformanceK. Ericsson, R. Krampe, C. Tesch-RomerPsychological Review 1993. Vol 100. No 3. 363-406For a shorter summary of this see ‘Attaining Excellence through Deliberate Practice: Insights from the Study of Expert Performance’ in :Desfores, C. et al (2002) ‘Teaching and Learning: the Essential Readings’ Oxford: Blackwell

ii See for example chapter 7 of “Teaching Today” 2nd Edition Geoffrey Petty

iii See “How People Learn: Brain mind, experience and school” expanded edition, by John D. Bransford et al National Academy Press (2000).

iv A self-fulfilling prophesy has been found in almost every domain of human endeavour studied. Belief is very powerful. For example, patients were given a vomit inducing drug by their doctors, but they were told it would reduce their vomiting. The reduction occurred. See any good a level psychology text book.

v H. Sharron, M. Coulter; (1987) “Changing Children’s Minds” published by Imaginative Minds

vi See my paper on Carol Dweck’s Theory of Motivation on the motivation page of http://geoffpetty.moonfruit.com )vii The ‘Supported Experiments’ paper can be obtained from the ‘for managers’ page of http://geoffpetty.moonfruit.com )viii See my paper on Carol Dweck’s Theory of Motivation on the motivation page of http://geoffpetty.moonfruit.com )ix Again, see my paper on Carol Dweck’s Theory of Motivation on the motivation page of http://geoffpetty.moonfruit.com )

There is a lot of work on expert performance, especially in the US, try the following:Search Google with:

“Expert performance” Desforgesor “Ericsson K A”

For a more generalised exploration on what learning and teaching can learn from studies of those with expert performance try this from the US Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning:

Bransford J. D. (2000) How People Learn: brain mind, experience, and school”; National Academy Press; Washington